The Gift She Gave Me So I Could Live Alone

So Gini is now in Seattle. She’s on a cross-country trip for three weeks, leaving me at home with the dog.

It’s pretty lonely. Not too lonely; our youngest daughter has moved back in with us for a few months while she finds her feet, but still. I’m used to a life with Gini, and not having her sitting across from me while I work feels empty. I’m staying up hours later than I normally would, because I’m avoiding going to a bed without a Gini to snuggle in it.

But my wife loves me.

Honestly, she could have just dumped a bag of Bachelor Chow in the basement and skedaddled off, but instead she busted her ass on a project to remind me of her love. She’d been threatening to make me an otter quilt for months, ever since we’d found some otter fabric in a store in Oregon and I squeed “ZOMG OTTERS I LOVE OTTERS OTTER FABRIC.”

Yet I didn’t understand why she’d taken to staying up late into the night, sewing and cutting and pinning and laying out, until she said to me, “I won’t be here, but my quilt will be.”

Such love.

And when she finished it, I squeed. It was big, so I could sleep underneath it, and heavy, because I like warmth, and it was full of love. And it looked like this:

It’s hard to see the otters from this distance, but she did a wonderful job – putting them in little swirling circles so it looks like they’re swimming. It’s a very active quilt. And it’s full of otters, my favorite mammals.

And when she presented it to me, it looked like this:

She’s gone, and she’s still gone, and she’ll be gone for another few weeks still. It’s a lonely house.

But I can go to bed a little sooner, because when I do I am wrapped in her love.